‘Candelabra’ redwoods part of new Lost Coast Trail in Mendocino County

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One of the main attractions of the new trail are the candelabra trees, saved from being logged because how they were shaped by the wind and salty air.

A hiker is about to leave the redwoods to stand on a meadow overlooking the Pacific Ocean, which the Peter Douglas Trail offers fantastic views of on clear days.

Hikers can now go deeper into the redwoods of the Lost Coast thanks to a new trail into the Shady Dell Forest in Mendocino County. (Nathan DeHart - Special to the Ukiah Daily Journal)

Louisa Morris of the Mendocino Land Trust designed the Peter Douglas Trail, camping out nearby for most of last summer to oversee the work. (Nathan DeHart - Special to the Ukiah Daily Journal)

California Conservation Corps member Daniel Viellieux Thursday walked the trail he helped build with crew member Monique Torres, right, up ahead with the walking stick. Both said they were "pretty amazed" at how the trail turned out.

Not far from where Highway 1 ends its ocean-kissing journey up the edge of California, a path into another world begins.

That world is called the Lost Coast, which so far has achieved the impossible. Too rugged to be tamed by pavement, its spectacular beachfront property remains wild, accessible only to humans humble enough to enter on foot.

And now even more of that wilderness is open to hikers thanks to a partnership between the Save the Redwoods League and the Mendocino Land Trust that carved the Lost Coast Trail deeper into Mendocino County.

It all began in 2011, when the league bought 957 acres of former logging ground known as The Shady Dell Forest near Sinkyone Wilderness State Park.

The following year, Louisa Morris of the Mendocino Land Trust began her attempt to at least partly tame this coastal forest, a process she found both exhilarating and exhausting.

The map

“This was the hardest project I’ve done,” said Morris, who began designing trails when she was 19. “It was very challenging because of its remoteness.”

She began creating the trail the same way most hikers will begin exploring it: with a map.

“You find your start and end points, figure out what things you want to include between them, then you connect the dots,” she said. But the map is where the “easy” part ends. The next steps are where many an idea evaporates, particularly in a state so fiercely protective of its natural resources.

“The permitting and planning process took more than two years,” said Morris, describing much of that waiting time as “when we sit at our desks, dreaming about the trail.”

Once the dreaming was over and the work began, Morris spent “the better part of four months” camping near the trail site at Usal Beach Campground, which can only be reached – for those who can’t fly – by driving miles of the twisting and rutted Usal Road, a journey all its own.

“I drove that road all summer with just my Prius,” she said with a laugh, describing the road as “pretty good” when it’s dry, but a slippery mess when the rains come. “I did get terribly stuck at least once, though.”

When she made it to the property, Morris said she spent 70 hours a week on the trail, working side-by-side with the California Conservation Corps crews who cut much of the trail by hand.

“Every inch of the trail has a story,” she said, celebrating the opening of the trail to the public Thursday with many others who helped forge it. “Walking it now, I can remember all of the miracles, and all of the debacles.”

The trees

The north end of the new 2.3-mile trail begins with a short climb to a viewing platform and bench among the grove of “candelabra trees,” so named because each tree’s twisted, pronged shape resembles a multi-armed candleholder.

“We wanted the platform here because it is about eye-level to this,” said Paul Ringgold, chief program officer for Save the Redwoods League, pointing to a particularly impressive tree split into mirrored halves like a pair of moose antlers.

Ringgold said the trees were about 500 years old and their crooked shapes were created by violent windstorms that repeatedly blew off the tops of the trees, then bent any new growth.

Saved from becoming lumber because of their deformities, the trees instead became a well-known secret that enticed hikers into trespassing so often they created a “social trail” that Morris said she incorporated into the new trail as much as possible.

“We couldn’t close it off, but we changed it quite a bit to make it less steep,” Morris said, describing most aspects of trail design as “really fun. It’s a puzzle.”

The stairs

As CCC members Monique Torres and Daniel Viellieux climbed the stairs past the candelabra trees, they described how each of the 300 “or so” wooden steps was filled in with gravel.

“We couldn’t get the wheelbarrow down the trail, so we carried the gravel to it by hand,” said Torres, explaining that she and the other trail builders formed a human chain, then handed buckets of gravel down one-by-one to complete the stairs.

Taking the stairs to the top, hikers find themselves on an old logging road, heading away from an area known to be a popular nesting site for Spotted Owls.

“We tried to use the logging roads as little as possible, because it is best to build new trail so you can control the drainage,” Morris said, pointing out that the flat logging road has lines cut into it to funnel the water through.

The new trail doesn’t need those, however, “as it is all slightly tilted, so that every drop of water will just slide past the trail like it is invisible,” she said.

If you look closely at certain parts of that new trail, you will find pieces of glass that are nearly invisible, embedded in the hillside. From bottles left behind by decades of trespassing visitors, the glass became part of the web that keeps the soil in place.

The bridge

After the logging road ends and you’ve hopefully avoided stepping on any slugs, you’ll step through some large fallen trees and come upon Shady Dell Creek.

A sign next to it recalls the days when “salmon swam so thick that you could cross the creek on their backs,” but now there is a sturdy new bridge.

It was built by John Koski, “born and raised in Fort Bragg,” who sent a redwood tree to another man in Fort Bragg with an Alaskan Mill who could turn the tree into the boards needed for the bridge.

“But I couldn’t find anyone to drive them up here, so I had to do it myself,” said Koski, who put the boards on his truck and drove them to the creek on the logging roads after “doubling my insurance policy” at the request of one of the neighboring property owners.

“So then I was definitely the only one who could do it,” he said.

Koski also helped build the boardwalks that take hikers over the wetlands identified when a botanist and wetlands specialist inspected the property for environmental impacts.

“She found a rare moss, the Secret Pocket Moss, along the trail path,” said Morris, standing in a spot where the trail takes a sharp turn past a large log. “That turn is there because we had to move the trail 10 feet to avoid the moss. Whenever there’s a weird jog like that in a trail, it was likely because a rare species was found and the trail had to be moved.”

The ocean views

Since this is the Lost Coast, the ocean cannot be ignored, and a bench was put in along the logging road where a lovely beach cove sits far below.

The day of the unveiling was overcast, however, and those trying out the trail were offered only faint glimpses of light gray water beyond the thick fog.

Another memorable section of the trail has more stairs hugging a hillside covered in redwoods that appears to hover over the ocean, but on a foggy day hikers can only smell and hear the water. On a sunny day, the views from that section and the lovely hillside meadow above must be fantastic.

Despite the fog, Morris said Thursday’s celebration was a “joyous occasion,” as she now has enough distance from the arduous process of creating the trail to enjoy walking it.

“I’ve finally gotten to the point where I can step back enough to appreciate it and not dissect everything,” she said after showing the trail to many of the people at the league, the land trust, the CCC, the California Coastal Commission and the California State Coastal Conservancy who worked behind the scenes to make the trail a reality. “I’m really proud of how it turned out. It is the essence of the Lost Coast, which is really wild and spectacular.”

To reach the Peter Douglas Trail, named after the longtime director of the California Coastal Commission who helped write the Coast Act of 1976, find the mostly unmarked Usal Road at mile marker 90.88 on Highway 1, then head up a few bumpy miles until you find both a sign for the trail and a place to park.